Rocco was adopted last year from the Lakeshore Humane Society.

It’s been one year since Antonia and I adopted Rocco from the Lakeshore Humane Society. During that time, the small-ish Rottweiler mix has made big strides in overcoming the effects of whatever bad experiences he had as a puppy. People experienced in dog adoption have told me it’ll be a continuing learning process for both the dog and us. I suppose that is par for the course for most complicated things in life.

I can never know what series of circumstances brought him to someone’s driveway in Brocton in the fall of 2024. The report in the Humane Society’s records describes a stray dog less than a year old, famished and exhausted to the point he did not resist the dog catchers who were called to the scene by the woman who lived there.

At the kennel, he was subsequently “championed” by (given charge to) Kim, one of the officers at the Society, who dubbed him Rocco (a name which I had to accept despite it being the same as my nephew’s). He had been there a couple months before we visited the kennel. Of all the dogs we looked at that evening, he stood out as most handsome and mild mannered. A week later Kim approved us as his new family, with the caveat that he is, by his timid nature, a house dog.

When we brought him home he adjusted readily to his new environment – his bed, the house, the fenced in yard.

Yet his regard for us was very reserved, detached. He never barked (and to this date he has only once, when I came home very late, and it was more a groaning yelp than a bark). He was not very active, and the only thing that seemed to excite him was food. A few weeks later, when I took him to the groomer, Stacy, to have his nails clipped, she noted that his eyes seemed dull, listless, almost vacant. We both saw his expression as he watched me head toward the door. It seemed at first urgent, but quickly turned to a kind of sadness that follows a life of loss and abandonment.

Although Rocco would never become a very “sociable” dog (he remains averse to meeting new people or other dogs) he has grown very attached to his new home. Gradually he has become more vital, more interested in the smells and sound around him during our walks. He even has become a little playful, especially with Antonia.

He loves the snow where he romps and hunts for the chew chomps I throw into the yard. Now, a year later, although he remains terrified of fireworks, he is a relatively normal, obedient, gentle, and sometimes comical companion who begs for attention by lying flat out on his back, legs sprawled in all directions.

I can imagine many scenarios regarding his young life before he was brought to the Lakeshore kennel. The one that has emerged as the most plausible is that he was weaned too early, maybe even at four weeks. I imagine him as a tiny puppy being bottle fed like a baby by a woman or girl. And as he grows bigger, I can see a male figure who roughs him up trying to make him obedient and/or aggressive. This might explain his preference for females, and his oral idiosyncrasies like, how, when he plays, his mouth moves more like sucking motion than playful biting, and how he sometimes sleeps with his tongue out.

It’s also likely that Rocco was a product of a puppy mill or other irresponsible breeding practices. I know about this from personal experience, having at one time bred my purebred male dog with a purebred female owned by a friend. These were not AKC champions by any means, but the puppies were adorable little black furballs, and my first feelings were of joy. However, the process of advertising and selling them was another story. I had misgivings about some of the people to whom I sold the pups. My intuition told me they might not treat dogs well, but I had no evidence of that, and I felt obliged to get them a home. This vivid memory has haunted me for 30 years.

So in a way, Rocco comes to me, in part, as a means of personal atonement. Broadly speaking, it seems there is a larger, collective kind of atonement that humans in general should consider, and it has to do with the way dogs have been abused, abandoned or neglected throughout our codependent history. Witness the atrocity reported in the OBSERVER last week regarding the 19 abused dogs in a puppy mill in Sinclaireville. If dogs are truly man’s best friend, then we really ought to treat them as such.

Musician, writer, house painter Pete Howard lives in Dunkirk. Send comments to odyssmusic20@gmail.com